


The Bloody City

by Tower_Pigeon_428



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: If you tilt your head, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Twilight Gap, all your favorites are there but not nearby, deciding if you wanna be a guardian, little bit lore friendly, not the young wolf, or ghost made a big mistake, the tower at night is great for thinkin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24672841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tower_Pigeon_428/pseuds/Tower_Pigeon_428
Summary: As the Fallen encircle the city, a recently risen lightbearer weighs her options and thoughts on the Guardians in crisis.
Kudos: 3





	1. Merkabah

**Author's Note:**

> < > text is spoken in Old Russian, " " in your choice of Destiny lingua franca

A cloaked figure lay on its back across one of the many gantries that extended from the Tower’s sides, stippled about like an errant modeler’s forgotten weathering project. The Risen suspected it spoke to the forgetful nature of undying builders, moving from project to project as it suited them. For contemplative, or intoxicated, occupants they made for a wonderful place to just get away from even the frames and think.

Parachute flares hung like stars over the Frontier.

Thinking. A fact she announced to the faintly glowing blue and gold compass rose hovering with the back of its ball to her hooded head.

<Not surprising. About the Vanguard’s announcement?>

Her green eyes glowed in the dark as they opened, dots in a black mask with no lighting to highlight her face markings.

<The bald one, Zavala yes, Friend? His pronouncement. There is not legitimacy I can see in his orders. The Saint, the Saint was a leader as well as a warrior. I saw him pull apart a Vandal on patrol once… This Zavala I know nothing of, nor Ikora Ray, though I cannot fault the warlock’s exile even in a time of crisis> the risen spun an empty bottle on the grating with a zwish.

Compass points shifted, ‘eye’ aperture narrowing. Times like this, she wondered how her lightbearer chose when to display this level of thoughtfulness. Usually only when faced with what she saw, rightly in her ghost’s eye, as a moral problem. She orbited half a turn into the Awoken’s plane of view <Yes, Zavala is his name. He was one of the first Guardians of The City, before it could even be called that.>

Lavender fingers tossed a non-existent cigarette into the void below, ignoring her Friend’s insight to continue her thought <He wasted enough time, material, and lives on his mad quest. Rey could not do worse.>

Shell nearly touching her forehead, the ghost tried to focus her in before the discussion meandered into Dead Orbit or Dreaming City wine <You’ve been thinking about whether you should be a Guardian again?>

<I have no love for the Vanguard or the Consensus or most _Guardians_ > she said dreamily, lips parting to smirk <The people who have sought their protection, the safety and survival beneath the Traveler, human, exo, awoken… I have common cause with the Guardians at least, Friend, in that I want them to live safely under our protection. It is the duty of immortality, whether I fight as one of them or under their banner, the people of The City are not weak for seeking protection from those who are best suited to provide it. Fortune has brought me here at a time of crisis. I would not survive to return to the Shore now, not with the House of Wolves stirring, so I must do what I can here.>

<You will fight> Friend condensed her slurred words to their essence, as was her great skill.

<It will be a bloodbath. Then we will feast.>


	2. A Great Roar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Battle is joined, reputations are won and lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same as last time! < > is spoken in Old Russian, " " in your preferred Destiny lingua franca.

That irrepressible glow of Traveler’s gift felt harder to reach than ever, diminished inside her after unknown days fighting without rest. Her flesh was falling from the plasma burn that opened her jaw to the bone and arrowed across her head. Long pink hair still smoldered in places from weapons fire or her own lack of caution when swinging the blade that was the only weapon left to her. One the risen had fashioned from a cutting machine in a Titan ruin, with a handle of salvaged rubber bound tight around with wire thanks to meth induced focus.

She thought her lack of devotion to the Guardian ethos was of great benefit, even here at the dulled edge of their army, since none that followed their trifold path had ever seemed to use the same technique she had forged in the piss soaked alleys of the shore. Warlock Dawnblades came close, but their weapons were pure light. She could not lay claim to that much power or focus. Instead, the burning fire of her light flowed along the sharpened industrial blade like accelerant poured over a garbage pit. It had to be nuclear hot, she had decided, and when used boiled Fallen in their shells.

There was not enough light left in her to do that much any longer. Friend was not with her on the battlefield, where weapons fire and enemies were too much for the Traveler’s servant to have much chance of survival. The third time the battery had fallen she sent her companion to the city. She would fight until overwhelmed. If they were victorious, Friend would find her and set things right. If they were not, it would not matter. 

Pain was a very real sensation. Undeath did nothing to dull the feeling of her face being melted off by the convective heat from a near miss or the splintering blows of a Vandal’s blade. She had removed one limb at a time before driving her blade through his skull in reply. No, the veritable buckets of narcotics did that. But they had run their course. Either the come-down from her almost divine state of awareness or sheer trauma would down her soon.

Ylenna looked out over the side path her ad-hoc fireteam, without even a name, had been placed to protect one of the main defensive positions. The large exo that had been their leader was beneath the leg of a walker that never took another step, its guts blown out the top by her final attacks. Where the rangy warlock had gone, she did not know, but suspected no further than the scooped hillside where directed light had carved away a Fallen strike team. There had been another hunter… All that moved before her, beside her, had six eyes and at least four arms if her blurred vision could be trusted.

“Fireteam leaders: Do not advance on the Wall. Fall back to the Ridgeback District.”  
  
Zawra! She should really remember the names of the dead, the exo had been a strong leader, her barriers had been a safe refuge when her limbs worked well enough to suit the bounding style of battle that suited her. The risen’s vision swarmed with double the Fallen until it stopped spinning and there were triple.

“I repeat: All teams rally at the Ridgeback District. Do NOT advance. The City is lost.”

<Very well, you will do battle with Ylenna of the Shore, House of Devils scum! I will crack your shells now, and boil your women for sport!> she screamed with a throat burned raw from whipping wind and ice. The fighting had gone on too long, and the bemused scorn was gone from their eyes. It was a Guardian killing business now, which was a deadly line of work. Their Captain spun his blades easily, loosening his arms for the fight even a dying Risen could put up.

“Shaxx, your orders are to retreat.”

Ah, the orange one with the horns. He was another of the old ones, a Titan, she thought. Good for him. That Saladin was as bad as Zavala, calculating, running the odds. They had exiled Osiris but not their own sacrificial mindset. If the City fell what good was the Tower? At least that more important Guardian would draw the attention of their leaders rather than one straggling remainder on the flank.

“This battlefield is not your stage, Shaxx! This is not about glory!

Ylenna’s arms crept with flickering faint golden orange energy as she withdrew her leg from a dreg’s torso. It reached down the edge of her blade, point to the ground towards the Captain, who she locked two eyes with, some of his, and laughed <Will you be the first then, soft shell? Cross blades with me!>  
  
“Shaxx! For the final time! Fall! Back!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shamelessly stole dialogue from The Mountaintop's lore entry for that verisimilitude. Full credit for that goes to Bungie of course.


	3. Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ghost hunts the feasting table for their Guardian.

Far from the sea, the slopes of Twilight Gap stank like a fish processing plant of the Golden Age at high tide. Fallen, Exo, human, awoken were mixed together to form a miasma of rot for the carrion birds to enjoy. Lord Shaxx’s charge had inspired the broken Guardian forces to resume the field, momentum swinging against the exhausted Fallen alliance, driving them beyond the wall with a brutality that made Six Fronts’ violence look orderly. 

These were not unfaltering lines of Titans clashing with the invader in a heroic defense. This was the victory of a frightened, nearly broken force that wanted to make sure there would not be another battle like this. 

Friend had not seen the fighting at Six Fronts. She had been graverobbing with her irascible risen in search for lysergic acid diethylamide from old orbital research facilities at the time, though the news had spurred her to encourage Ylenna once again to at least experience the tour and its people. Now, looking at the gore chocked gulley, she regretted that with a fervor she had never known for anything other than the Traveler’s Light.

This was the last known position of Zawra-8, leader of her risen’s temporary fire team, the best guess of her resting place since the Awoken woman seemed baffled by personal technology or the idea of wearing enough clothing with her armor to hold it. Uncertainty filled Friend as she scanned, flitting about the masses of uncleared corpses. There was even a walker, perched over with grim looking buzzards, too full to eat more.

A House of Devils ribbon flapped from the hilt of a force sword, driven downward into the hard earth. Its motion drew her attention, which was fortunate since it saved her further searching. Spitted around the blade, with her hands cut to the bone gripping its powered blade, was her risen. It was a relief foreign even to a lightbearer to see a corpse that terribly mutilated. There was one, and that meant she would rise again. 

Her compass points rotated. It would be messy…. Then they would feast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment to roast my interpretations or correct things I got wrong or just to say whatever.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't claim to be a lore expert, but I do like rooting around through things in-game or via the Ishtar Collective. My Hunter's kinda of grown to fit the basic concepts I started with, and occasionally I've been writing up some short pieces of her personal history. Mistakes in editing and lore are my own, or subject to my interpretation.


End file.
